1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a fuel cell-equipped vehicle and a control method for a fuel cell-equipped vehicle.
2. Description of the Related Art
A fuel cell produces water along with electricity generation. Therefore, in the case where a fuel cell is mounted in a vehicle, the produced water needs to be dealt with. In the case where the produced water is released outside, there is a need to restrain a drawback of the water landing on the surrounding objects. Therefore, various proposals have been made as described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-153853 (JP-A-2005-153853), Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2006-185616 (JP-A-2006-185616), and Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2006-141154 (JP-A-2006-141154). For example, JP-A-2005-153853 describes a fuel cell vehicle in which the amount of discharged water is controlled according to the speed of the vehicle or the inter-vehicle distance to the following vehicle.
However, the determination based on the inter-vehicle distance or the vehicle speed sometimes fails to give an appropriate result of determination as to whether the discharging of water is allowed or the allowable amount of water to be discharged, depending on a relation with the following vehicle. Therefore, there is a risk of prohibiting water discharging when it is actually possible or, conversely discharging water when water discharging needs to be prohibited.